


Dream Lab

by hyoseumi



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Inspired by Stranger Things (TV 2016), M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 11:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15795870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyoseumi/pseuds/hyoseumi
Summary: Johnny is a doctor doing a research inside Ten’s mind, slowly controlling his dreams to find him in real life.Ten has a power he is learning to use, he is able to produce meteorological disasters but can’t control them because, somehow, these lay in his emotions.





	Dream Lab

**Author's Note:**

> a-yooo what's up! nothing much to say than this is highly based in the first episode of nctmentary... i was meaning to write this when nctmentary episodes were out but i never felt inspired enough :( so i set up a darkwave playlist vika sent to me and then let the words flow in my fingerrrrsss... i don't know what's happening next, honestly orz neither i know how this fanfic is gonna end but i'm planning on making it short! and not abandon it lol

Darkness is immense. Darkness is magnificent. This world is filled with darkness, but people seems to not to care at all. Some of them fear the darkness, the rest want to see it. They want to feel it, in their hearts. They want to become _one with the darkness_.

 

He doesn’t quite remember how he ended in that place. Mysterious voices surrounding him, big shadows with no face. They were getting inside of him, breaking his bones, ripping his skin. He doesn’t remember how they made their way up to his mind, to his heart. He doesn’t remember the moment he was corrupted, muting in someone he wasn’t.

He just remembers darkness and the sweet, comforting aura this one had. He felt peaceful, like a baby swinging on his crib.  

 

He was a child at that time. Every night, he would cry in his bed, electrodes in his head. He often convulsed, his body couldn’t contain all the drugs those shadows put in his dairy meal. He was weak, desperately trying to survive, trying to fight the monsters and the nightmares inside his mind.

Chittaphon was a strong soul, but 10 became an empty shell. They did it to him, his father did this to him! Poor child didn’t know how _scary_ humans could be.  

 

One day, he escaped. He set on fire the bracelet he had in his foot, with his own mind. That was the first thing he did before realizing how powerful he was. He ran, ran till his lungs couldn’t process air no more. The small branches, leaves and thorny flowers of the forest opened wounds on his feet. The invisible tears mixed with the sweat, the cold and cruel air of the trees made him tremble.

He hid, eyes closing tight, hands praying to the God that lived in the sky. _Please, please, don’t let them find me!_ Creak, creak, creak. _I’ll diei’lldiei’lldiei’lldie!_ Steps, whispers. And then, silence. He breathed, tried to, but he was afraid the noise of his respiration could break the sudden quietness of the forest.

Finally, he fell asleep.

 

The next day, he walked through the entire forest. The singing of the birds, the scamper of the little animals living in there, the freshness and leafiness of the plants. Everything was new and amusing. For the first time in his life, he was happy to be alive.

 

Eight years had passed since then. It was an ordinary morning on his cabin. As usual, he woke up, didn’t eat a single thing and went directly to the bathroom. In his neck, he saw the number ten and got mad at it. It was his _curse_. He tried to wash it with soap, then rinse it with water, repeat the same step. Once it was properly cleaned, he would use dry nettles, peeling his skin off. Then repeat the same step. He used to do that every day. He would look at himself in the mirror, dark circles under his eyes, messy black hair, heat rash in his neck. _Why it won’t go away!?_ He would feel like crying, like screaming his guts out, but he couldn’t do that.

Even if he had some kind of power —which he totally ignored—, there was plenty of things he couldn’t do.

 

He received a call half an hour later, it was Sicheng, the same person who gifted him that stupid gizmo.

“Hello? Ten?” He hesitated for a moment, hearing some interferences on the device. “I’m going to your place.”

 

“I’m doing pretty fine, thanks for asking,” he replied, kind of petty. “Yeah, yeah, gotchu. I’ll be waiting here, are you bringing everything I asked you to?”

 

“Yes, though your calligraphee is real bad,” Sicheng laughed, then went silent for seconds. He was about to keep talking when Ten complained.

 

“Is pronounced calligraphy. See you later.”

 

Sicheng took an hour to come at Ten’s cabin, bringing him food, shampoo, a new toothbrush, some of his old clothes and a pack of cigarettes. He was his only friend, the person that found him some days after he disappeared for the first and the last time. Sicheng’s family and friends didn’t know about the existence of Ten, yet still he managed to take care of him for all these years.

They grew up together, trusted each other’s secrets. They weren’t as talkative as many friends, but they sure appreciated each other. Sicheng used to visit him once two weeks, Ten was the one to say it wasn’t necessary to come by every week. The younger boy had a life, he was seventeen indeed, he used to think about it. And he hated the feeling of being an inconvenience.

 

“How is it going? Your _power_ ,” Sicheng air quoted.

 

“I don’t know,” Ten stretched, sitting on his old, grimy sofa. “The other day I burned one of my plants with a look. Nuts, isn’t it?”

Sicheng looked at him like he didn’t understand, he was a foreigner after all. He nodded, looked at his wrist watch and got up.

 

“Sorry, Ten, I have to go. Mum doesn’t want me coming later for the dinner,” Ten got up too. “Take care.”

Sicheng held Ten’s hands between his, gazing at each other for long seconds. His expression was known by the older boy: sad eyebrows, worried deep eyes, smiling lips. At those times, Ten wish he could go away, move to another country, become ashes, stop existing. But that was another thing he couldn’t do.

Finally, Sicheng took his bike and disappeared into the forest.

 

_While dreaming,_

_chain reactions of memories_

_are happening in our brain._

_Dreams are affected by expressions of_

_unconsciousness, past experiences_

_and daily experiences._

_And we enter deeper into the dream._

It’s solitary; white, covered in dust. If you walk, you can see a pile of trash on a side, it’s basically junk. There’s a TV too, or it is a monitor? you can’t see it clearly. Your steps are long, torpid… Even if you try, you can’t run.

You dare to take a look at the rest of the place, but there’s nothing important. A dead tree, you could chop the wood off of it. There’s a calico cat under it. He is looking at you; you know it’s a male because it has a big head. His eyes are electric indigo; you want to take him to that thing you call _home_.

 

Suddenly, you hear a voice, but you don’t know what that voice is saying. You feel like someone is behind you, so you turn your body to see if it’s not your own paranoia. Wow, you did it, congratulations. Maybe you could do other things in this dream.

When you turn around again, there’s a piano. You want to approach so you do, good job. It’s like a long, eternal journey because you feel your body being heavier than normal. But it’s nice, you like the feeling.

There’s plenty of monitors over the piano, the set seems old but rebuilt. You take your time to take a look at the whole thing, curious to see if some of the monitors turn on. But they don’t. For a single moment, you feel your fingers like flying. And suddenly, you are touching one of the piano keys.

You aren’t afraid, even if you want to be, even if you want to wake up. You start playing a melody that seems a lullaby. And you wish someone could hear it, or maybe someone is already listening to it? Because you don’t hear that distorted voice anymore. It was creepy, then why have you the desire, the need to hear it again? It doesn’t matter. Because when you raise your head over the monitors, there’s one in the middle that’s turned on.

 _No signal_ , you read. The letters are painted in yellow, and there’s a spinning ring on the background. Your fingers creak, your head starts hurting like hell. It gives you the feeling someone is doing this to you. And you want to speak it out, tell them to stop. But when you speak, you have no voice.

Agonizing, you wake up.

 

“Shit, I thought I had something,” a voice is louder in the room.

The place is bathed in a dim green light, there’s no one around at that time, the clock sets four in the morning. The guy with the cadmium yellow turtleneck and the beige squared coat seems frustrated. There’s a camera on his desk, but it isn’t made to take photos.

It’s made to see people’s dreams. It’s made for _research_ , equipped with one of the highest technologies of the century. It has a tube with an oculus made with crystal, it’s a rare mechanism, like a periscope. And it’s connected to a computer.

 

He frowns, chin resting on his hand, taking a deep breath at the monitor.

 

“No signal, good, it’s not like I’ve been trying for years,” he whispers to himself, devastated.

He really feels like taking a break or sleep till tomorrow. But the thing is, he needs to communicate with Ten, or E10 like his co-workers like to name him. He had seen him, at least. And the latter noticed his presence for a large amount of time in that dream. So he got something, even if he isn’t content.

 

Seo Youngho is a young man —or Johnny for his drunk buddies—, a doctor specialized in dreams and how to study them. He has an 138IQ and is considered the best in his department, basically because he’s the only one working in it. He is tall, twenty-eight years, with dark brown hair parted in the middle, _dashing_ but an utterly mess.

Johnny is a smart guy but gets overwhelmed a lot. He works for the NCT Enterprises, a laboratory that seems to experiment with humans since the sixties. An organization that in turn works for the government of Daeseong-dong, in South Korea.

The reason of his stress is he doesn’t like his job. He considers it’s like working for the devil and he often thinks he is deeply inside into the wolf’s jaws. But he has intentions, a greater purpose that guides him to keep moving forward.

He wants to reach 10.

 

For what? He doesn’t know _yet_. Maybe it’s just perseverance, since they gave this case to him five years ago. He had been developing new technologies to investigate about dreams. He had studied the phases of the sleep, the meaning of the dreams, the symbology and the folklore behind animated and inanimate objects. He had been into normal dreams, experimenting with people’s mind: talking to them and controlling their actions. Even into lucid dreams like the last one, fifteen minutes ago.

And he did all these things because of 10.

 

All these years, he heard many stories about Ten. Some were horrifying and cruel, describing the things they did to him, how his father experimented with his body and gave him _the power._ The others were from villagers, mostly rumors saying that the kid was immortal, that he got telekinesis or even worse, that he was a werewolf.

 

Johnny is tired. Of many things.

He leaves his studio, takes the elevator to the highest floor of the building and search for his keys to open the door to his room. He pulls off his coat, hangs it in the rack, he isn’t changing to his pyjamas today. He should swallow his thoughts, forget about it. He should take decisions, something that’s exactly the opposite. But more important, he should sleep.

 

 _Finding him would take time and effort_ , he thinks. But that's just a crude form of consolation.

**Author's Note:**

> anyways, hope you enjoyed it! i'm like... highly proud of this prompt so i'll be waiting your kudos and comments (please leave them, they make me happy ;w;)!!  
> and also sorry for the bad writting, i will be proofreading it soon ♥  
> as always you can send me anon hate on [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/toppumakku) or do it off anon at [twitter](https://twitter.com/madcitywav)!! thanks!


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